As if we needed yet another reason to vote the Republican Party out of existence, John McCain says he intends to continue blocking the appointment of a ninth Supreme Court justice if Clinton wins

John McCain came out today and said that, despite his past statements, he has no intention, if Hillary Clinton is elected president, of considering the man or woman she selects to fill the seat on the Supreme Court left vacant after the February 2016 death of Antonin Scalia, continuing what has to be one of the most shameful chapters in U.S. Senate history.

Following, by way of my Facebook friend Timothy Drouhard, are three quotes from McCain which illustrate his progressively downward evolution on the subject. [I’ve added links to the source material, for those of you who might be interested.]

7/21/05: “So, if you have got a complaint — I’m talking about the left and the far left — then win the next presidential election, and then your guy can appoint Ruth Bader Ginsburg — or your woman— your man or woman — excuse me — can appoint Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Breyer and others that are to the left. That’s — that’s the way the system works.” [source]

2/15/16: “I believe that we should wait until after the next election and let the American people pick the next president, and we should consider who the next president of the United States nominates.” [source]

10/17/16: “I promise you that we will be united against any Supreme Court nominee that Hillary Clinton, if she were president, would put up.” [source]

So, just so we’re clear, the 11 months Senate Republicans, in violation of their constitutional duty, have neglected to consider Obama’s appointee to the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, apparently wasn’t good enough. Now McCain is promising, without even knowing who Clinton might select to fill the vacant seat, that he has no intention of ever fulfilling his obligation as outlined in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution, which states that the President “shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States, whose appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by law.” No, he has made it clear that he, and his fellow Republicans, having learned nothing over the past eight years, will continue their unprecedented obstructionism, putting their own desperate need to retain some semblance of control over the health of our democracy.

If Sanders ability to manage his campaign budget (or file necessary documentation) or create sound fiscal planning for his policy proposals is any indication of his capacity as budget committee chair, we are all in big trouble. Maybe his wife Jane can help. She only bankrupted an entire college to the point if dissolution via loan fraud.

Hopefully it won’t matter because dems will probably control the Senate. This is all McCain is looking at. He knows there are a lot of R’s that hate Trump but are voting for him because of the Supreme Court. Now that Trump has no chance, they’re offering this as a last ditch effort to salvage voters further down the ticket. I personally don’t think that disavowing the Constitution and Rule Of Law are great ways to go about it, but there you have it.

It is so clear that obstructionism has not worked for the Republicans. It has pushed them to the point of Trump, a vacuum of leadership, and a divided ‘base’. Why they do they continue down this path? It makes no sense. They are clinging to a fatal strategy.

Did you really think things are going to get better after November 8th?

Things have been trending this way for nearly 8 years and the flow isn’t going to change – unless the Dems can take control of both houses.

I think many liberals/Dems were naive enough to think that race was the sole reason for all this logjam and division in Washington and the country. It was just the window dressing. For Hillary, if elected, the talking point will be that she’s a woman or unlikable (to put it kindly), but the institutional rift will still be there regardless of the candidate and the excuse.

Unfortunately, since we do not live in an actual democracy, even if the Democrats win the senate, that in no way guarantees Clinton’s nominees (RBG will retire eventually) will get confirmed. Republicans can filibuster and the only way to bypass is the so-called nuclear option, which, let’s face it, saves us when the republicans have the power. We are essentially hoping that the handful of “moderate” republicans will get the 60 votes needed to confirm.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich joined a teleconference last night hosted by the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) to discuss the presidential election, warning the group that if Hillary Clinton is allowed to nominate Supreme Court justices, she could pick “fanatics who want to impose a secular America on the rest of us” and who might even go so far as to require churches to remove the words “our Father” from the Lord’s Prayer.

I was not going to watch it because I caught myself seriously considering stealing some of my dog’s xanax first. Then I decided that if I was going to need to drug myself to deal with my anxiety about it, I could safely ignore my civic responsibility to watch it. Ugh. That man sure pushes my buttons. In the end, I did one of those breathing exercises and was able to watch the debate without medicating myself.

I can’t evaluation the debate impartially but my impression was that Trump kind of was holding it together at first which terrified me but then he lost it. I was ready for him to go full on “Not a puppet, you are the puppet, I know you are, but what am I? na na na na boo boo”

In the robot future where people only have to work 10 hours a week, get free money newly printed by the democratically managed central bank with information from the government run central media service (as private media sources will be made illegal), we will no longer have a need for John McCain.